My kids struggle with math. And it is not my best subject. So I came up with a game to make learning the equations more fun. I have four children and all of them are at different levels. 1-4th grade. With this game we can all play it together but still be challenged at our own level. I posted a picture of all you will need. I used empty cups from the crystal light. School Glue. Black construction paper or card stock, A Gold acrylic paint pen, or a white out pen, and the canaster to hold the crystal light, and scissors. I glued black paper in so the numbers are not seen on the reverse side. I wrote numbers on the paper with a gold deco color pen. If you don’t have a pen like that, they sell them at Michaels and are not too expensive, you can also use a white out pen. It is less expensive and works just as great as you can see with the number 8 I made. If you have just one level, you can write equations, then the kids have to match them but have to answer the question in a specific time to collect the cups. For my kids I used just numbers. Now my 6 year old can add the numbers to get the right answer and my 4th grader can multiply the same numbers to get the cups. I can even use it for division and subtraction if I don’t use anything other then numbers. And the containers for the crystal light are a perfect place to store the game when you are done playing it!

So the rules:

Youngest goes first

play goes clock wise

on your turn: turn over two cups multiply, subtract, add, or divide the numbers to get the right answer in less then 30 seconds. (As the parent you set what each child has to do, so there is no easy way out. Remember it is a game but you want to help them learn their math facts faster.)

If you get it right you keep the cups.

play ends when all cups are gone and winner is the one with the most cups.

Sometimes I forget that my kids think about their birth parents. It catches me off guard when I ask my son what he’s doing and he says he’s writing a letter to his birth mom. He wants to let her know how much he’s grown, and he loves her and wants her to stop taking drugs so he can see her again. He’s never met her. I have no pics of her. I’ve never met her. I wrote a heartfelt letter to her when she relinquished him, and it got to her much later while she was in jail. We never heard back from her though. Secretly it hurts to hear him write this letter. It leaves me feeling like I’m not doing enough to love him. It’s almost like secretly I wish they would love me so much that they would forget about them. Forget about the ones who gave them all these struggles in the first place. But logically I know this wont happen. Nor should it. It is my job to help them feel good about their birth parents so they feel good about themselves. To help them understand that they didn’t abandon them, but loved them enough to give them a better life and safer life. To let make sure they know how hard it was for them to let them go in the first place. And to make sure they know how lucky I am to have such wonderful children to love and care for. It’s my job to give them positive hope that they will one day see them again and get to share all these letters and feelings with them. As I watch my little boy’s eyes fill with tears as he realizes he can’t actually send this beautiful letter to the woman he knows about, but wants to believe she lives butterflies, I do just that. I help him feel better. I hug him tight, I let him express that he misses her and wonders about her. I tell him positive reasons why she didn’t write. I hug him tight and tell him how much I love him and that I’m grateful for God giving me a perfect son. Hoping inside that when he is older this is what he will remember instead of how much he gets in trouble. But secretly I think how easily positives are lost and bogged down by negatives. I say secretly because I would never share these fears with him. But with others I will share so that people understand other sides of adoption and that I’m not a super mom, I’m just a mom. And thankful to be one.